Vote down?

Victor makes the point that “I find that by focusing just on the disabled you’re not selling this ‘accessibility-thing’ to the non-believers.”

Personally, I find the exact opposite. That if you focus on the additional benefits rather than the needs of users with disabilities, you give people an excuse to ignore it, because they can say ‘we don’t mind losing those extra benefits’.

Accessibility is about the needs of people with disabilities. That’s what it’s about. The extra benefits are great, but they’re just that — extra benefits, not the core purpose.

Maybe we just need a new word for it :-) Maybe the word “accessibility” is just loaded to with too much baggage.

But what to choose instead? “universal design” is basically a myth, and “inclusive design” smacks of liberal fascism to me (though I can’t say that’s rational, or why it makes me feel uneasy, it just does!)

I’m generally of the view that accessibility should not be treated as a separate subject at all. Accessibility is not a feature, it’s a process — it’s as indivisible from HTML, as the cascade is from CSS, or prototyping is from JavaScript.